Sales in The Wolf of Wall Street

In The Wolf of Wall Street, the movie is staged in New York City on Wall Street, where Leonardo DiCaprio is the boss of an investment firm. The investment firm is full of salesmen who cold call wealthy people and try to sell them on working with their company to invest in stocks. I watched a snippet of a scene called The Key to Making Money, and it shows many good sales lessons and tactics. The scene starts out with DiCaprio talking to his sales reps and teaching them the method of getting people to invest through their company. His first point that he makes which is his most important point, is that they need to create a sense of trust with the clients. He talks about how they will tell clients how established their company is and that they came across on the Mayflower to Plymouth Rock. In this business, they are selling people on investing tens of thousands of dollars, so trust is definitely a key point that needs to be focused on. The scene then goes on to explain the tactic of getting them to invest in big companies that they know at first, which will help them instill trust, and then later on, once they are roped in, sell them on investing in smaller stocks where the brokers will make more commission.  The scene later goes on to a sales call where DiCaprio makes his pitch to the client and then after that the scene goes to him explaining to the sales man that after your pitch you wait and “whoever speaks first loses”. This is an example of how as salesmen we don’t want to say too much and talk ourselves out of a sale. The scene then goes on to explain that instilling trust is the most important method in cold calling and as a stockbroker you must sell yourself to the client in order for them to believe in you and trust you in investing their money.